


When The Day Is Done

by FactorialRabbits



Category: JUDGE EYES: 死神の遺言 | Judgment
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, But everyone does, Crack, Everyone Has Issues, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Final Boss, Pre-Epilogue, That's it, hot chocolate blankets and the paralysing fear your loved ones are injured, mention of injury, mostly higashi and yagami have issues, oh and playing 'how many people can we fit on Yagami's sofa', some combination of those four in a bowl mixed up but not blended, that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:01:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21733405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FactorialRabbits/pseuds/FactorialRabbits
Summary: The battle is over, the case finally won. Everyone is exhausted, most are still sporting black eyes (and worse), two only escaped hospital an hour or so ago, and the office really isn't big enough for five. But, at the end of the day, they still have each other.And they wouldn't change it for the world.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 39





	When The Day Is Done

**Author's Note:**

> This Frankenstein of a story demanded it be written, and these boys will not let me go finish my chapterfic in another fandom. There are another two, small scenes that I may tack on later, but not sure. Doing so would increase the character count a little. I am absolute trash for found family, and even worse when they're fire forged, and absolutely sold when certain other tropes come into play. 
> 
> Basically this game played into my tastes with these boys, and then refused to let go.
> 
> Sorry for out of character where it happens, and also for the constant mood shifting of this little bit.
> 
> Also, towards the end Yagami spends a paragraph imagining things that could have gone wrong. Nothing is worse than canon, one can occur in game if you fail a time limit, but yeah.
> 
> Set during the small timeskip between the fallout from the final boss and the epilogue at the jail.

Yagami hated hospitals, and was only glad to be free of it. Maybe he should have stayed a little longer, as the doctor had wanted, but he was a grown man. If it had not been for the situation, he would have just dealt with it at home.

What was a concussion, severe blood loss, and a few damaged ribs, after all?

But then he had been seen falling from an exploding aerial walkway, shattering the roof of a car, and then had a fist fight with a lunatic assassin with a gun. Not to mention all of the other fights on the way there.

So, yes, it was understandable that the police had insisted that someone at least check him over, and also that he had been forced to stay in that awful place until they were quite certain that the concussion would not become anything else.

He probably still would have refused the attention, as was his prerogative as a sensible, mature adult, but for Sugiura. Going with him to the hospital was the easiest way to be certain that his bullet wound would not kill him, that he did not have another death on his hands, that the brat was fine. That the bullet and knives and fists and explosion and falling down and the getting up and the blood dripping to the floor had done no long-term harm.

The brat was indeed fine, stitched and cleaned up and full of painkillers, but still memories tried to win. Those of watching the blood seep through his fingers, seeing him shake as he tried to hold his phone, the quiet 'Yagami-san'... Still it had been better than the lack of knowledge, of knowing he had left Higashi and Kaito to fight outnumbered and surrounded and alone, of not knowing if someone had taken a knife to the defence after he fled the courtroom.

Kaito teased him mercilessly for it, but damn if he wasn't worried.

Both of them were. All of them were. All... however many people were involved; Yagami's brain hurt trying to list them all, so he gave in. It was not as though he would be writing thank you cards. The headache impeded his vision, his stealth, and at this point all he wanted to do was collapse onto his sofa and sleep. Which meant dragging himself along the streets of Kamurucho, and hoping nobody took a fancy to his wallet or jacket.

A man called out a threat; Yagami sprinted the last few steps to his building, tore open the door, and slammed it behind him. Skilfully he dodged his landlady on the stairs - or, more accurately, gave her the most exhausted look possible and maybe revealed his bandages slightly that she'd at least give him a night off - and pushed his way into his office.

Or he would have done - it was locked, like was sensible but uncommon. Maybe Kaito had stopped by to collect something earlier?

Sighing, he reached for his keys, staring at them a moment as he tried to remember the correct one, and went to unlock it. The first was wrong, the second may have been correct. He would never find out - said key did not make it to the lock before there was a click, and the door swung open.

More confused than the situation deserved, Yagami looked up, to see Kaito's obnoxious shirt and features grinning at him, "hey, Tak."

"Hey," Yagami rubbed his eyes with one hand, and gestured dismissively at his friend with the other. "Sleep now, talk later."

"Gotcha," Kaito winked, paused a moment, and then carried on. "I already ate everything in the fridge."

He gave his friend a long look, trying to decide between exhaustion, false anger, and exasperation, before deciding on apathy and slipping past him. Something about the room was different. He squinted about, trying to find the problem.

It took longer than it really should have done.

There was a scrappy kettle on his desk, plugged in and clicking even as it struggled to heat... something. Water? You put water in kettles, yes?

Oh, and his coffee table seemed to have been upended and pushed against the empty wardrobe. And the sofa and seats pushed as far from the middle of the room as they could be. A middle of the room covered in blankets. On which sat an impishly grinning Sugiura, one hand waving and the other clutching a pillow to his chest.

And Higashi was sat, straight as a rod, on his couch, carefully glaring at a random spot on the wall.

And Hoshino was stood bowing, feet shuffling ever so slightly.

Yagami took a moment to process, to work out how quite to dismiss them and sleep. Coming up blank, he turned on Sugiura, finger reaching out to point accusingly, "you're supposed to be in hospital."

Sugiura merely shrugged, his hands and pillow dropping dismissively into his lap, "I was bored."

"We were worried about you," Hoshino finally stood up, seeming to realise he was never going to be told he could stand. He spoke so fast that Yagami's exhaustion (and pain-killer) riddled brain could barely keep up. "When Genda-sensei mentioned you were leaving today, we decided to come here, and make sure you were safe. Well, Higashi-san and I did; Sugiura-san dropped off your roof and met us at the door, and Kaito-san let us in."

Kaito, having at some point pushed past him and over to the dying kettle, yawned with a gesture at... Yagami wasn't quite sure, "it was his plan."

"Riiiiight..." Yagami looked around. "Well, here I am, all my organs intact. Get yourselves gone; I don't want to talk work until morning."

Higashi cleared his throat, the only one of the four intruders not looking dejected at the instruction. At least, not at first, there was something off about the corner of his lips, "good night, everyone."

Yagami was not quite certain what he was expecting, but it was not quite for Higashi to just stand up, give a bow of farewell, and make his way to the door.

"Hey, Higashi, get back here," Kaito called over, some sort of look that Yagami cared not to parse on his face. "You were as worried as the rest of us; now get your ass back on the sofa. We're doing this!"

"Doing what, exactly?" Yagami turned on Hoshino, the boy visibly nervous. He felt a little bad about preying on the fact that Hoshino was clearly the weakest link in the room, but only a little. The boy should really know by now that Yagami would stoop that low for answers.

"Um, well," Hoshino looked to the others for help, and found none; Kaito was speaking uncharacteristically quietly with Higashi, and Sugiura was smirking from his place on the floor. "We... We just thought, maybe you would like company? And hot chocolate?"

"And what does this have to do with the state of my room?"

"Haven't you ever seen a blanket nest?" Sugiura's voice held an eye roll the brat did not make. "Are you so old you've never had a sleepover?"

Yagami blinked a moment, "I have, but..."

"We thought," Hoshino looked around again; apparently his victory in court had not quite bought him confidence in his social life, too. "That maybe you would appreciate it? Given..."

"What he means," Kaito waved Higashi to deal with the whistling kettle, seeming bored of trying to glare it into heating faster, and flopped heavily onto the sofa himself. "Is that we are all staying here tonight; we're keeping you company until this shit dies down. We wanna know nobody's broken in and put a knife between your ribs, and you wanna know the same about us."

Yagami looked around, wondering how they would all even fit. He opened his mouth to object, stopping as Kaito held up a jokingly warning finger. He reconsidered; maybe it wasn't such a terrible idea... He looked around again, letting his posture relax and he came a little further into the room, "Sugiura, you have the couch."

"But the blanket nest!" he looked almost genuinely... actually genuinely upset about the idea of missing out on it.

"You were shot," Yagami's voice was as exhausted as he was exasperated. "You're not sleeping on the floor."

"Kaito-san was shot too," the brat objected, though he tried to make it flippant. "He could have the sofa."

"Hey," Kaito interjected. "I've been shot before. And not as recently. And I didn't break out of hospital by climbing down the drain pipe."

"You didn't go to hospital at all," there was a beat of silence. "Also, fire escape. Not drain pipe.."

"Yeah, well, I'm used to it," Kaito said, taking one of the cups from Higashi.

Now he thought about it, Yagami realised that Higashi was somehow holding more mugs than he actually owned. Some were clearly from the staff room at Charles', and now he thought so was the dying kettle, The one that Higashi presented Yagami with was entirely unfamiliar. It was a slightly off shade of white, and decorated with tiny painted bunchans, parading around the base and climbing a spiralling ladder to the rim. On the inside, he could see more decorations - the bird orbs having fallen from the ladder and inside the cup, and their ultimate fates hidden by the thick brown liquid within. Around the handle was a gift tag, and he had a horrible suspicion that both he was being left with this abomination, and that everyone in the room - and possibly the entire Matsugane family - knew it was about to become his most treasured possession.

Everyone was staring at him as he took a sip, spluttered, and looked at him, "what is this?!"

"Don't you know hot chocolate, Tak? Shame on you." Yagami was not certain if he was thankful that it was Kaito who responded rather than one of the less familiar men in the room, or if he wanted to punch his teeth out for the teasing. Huh. It had been a few years since teeth seemed good.

"This isn't-" Yagami took another sip to be certain. "There's something else. Are you drugging me?"

"You put whiskey in coffee, so why not hot chocolate?" Higashi fiddled with the cuff of his shirt, and Yagami was struck with the image of the nervous, chronically anxious teen that Kaito had taken under his wing, not... whatever the hell Hamura had forged him into. The vision lasted a moment, before Higashi snapped back to his new, bitter self. "You look like shit."

Yagami's sleep deprived brain could not quite think of the appropriate response in timely fashion - maybe him looking like shit meant he looked like he needed alcohol? - so he took another sip, his nose curling in distaste; no, it was actually as foul as he had first surmised.

Too distracted by the drink, he did not notice the encircling arms until it was too late. He yelped as Kaito forced him onto the sofa, somehow violently insistent and also without causing pain. Or making him spill his drink. It was a small mercy, but one none the less, that he was forced down beside the other man, and not onto his lap. The position was not exactly uncomfortable, but he was forcibly nestled into Kaito's side.

Normally he would not mind, but with the three younger men watching, he felt it only proper to at least try and pull away.

Sugiura's lips twisted into an even wider grin as he ignored all propriety, not to mention Yagami's escape attempts. He scampered up onto the remaining cushion, looped his legs over the armrest - still wearing his shoes, though only Higashi seemed concerned about that - and flopped sideways as to use Yagami's lap as a pillow.

Kaito gave a loud bark of laughter at the sight, pulling Yagami uncomfortably close to his side, "Trapped again, Tak! You must try harder."

Ignoring him, Yagami moved to loop an arm over the brat's back. Part of his mind was incredibly grateful; it would be a lie to say that, when he closed his eyes, he never saw the blood seeping through the brat's shirt. The terrified 'I think... he got me', and the way his own heart had stopped a moment. He had promised it would be fine, but... He wasn't sure he really believed it.

Did anyone ever promise things would be fine, if they believed they would be?

The room remained in at a stilted impasse for a while, nobody quite wanting to mention the tangle of arms or the emotions passing over all five faces in turn. Each of them remained trapped in their own thoughts, sipping the spiked hot chocolate. It was probably that they all thought of the same things; Yagami relaxed against Kaito, whose face had turned sombre, and threaded his fingers into Sugiura's hair as the brat once again his his face away. He did not look at the other two men, his own eyes affixed at a spot beyond the upended coffee table, waiting for something to draw it.

First was Hoshino's fidgeting, then the eerie, torn expression on Higashi's face.

Higashi found his answer before Hoshino, coming over to stand before the trio on the sofa. Again, he hesitated, torn.

Yagami went to invite him to join them, but Kaito's silence caused him to pause; something he did not have the energy to work out was passing between the yakuza and his former aniki.

Eventually, slowly, without breaking eye contact, Higashi moved to kneel at Kaito's feet. Only then did he bow his head, and his body, into a gesture of greater submission. His body was tense, rigid almost, and it did not take energy to work out that whatever he expected was something that Kaito would never do.

At that the rest of them in the room were an audience who not leave, but should not be seeing it.

Kaito's expression was dark as he tugged him to lean against his legs, and ran a hand through Higashi's hair. Higashi made a choked noise, before he dove forward, grasping onto Kaito's legs and hiding his face from them all. There was an uncharacteristically soft frown on Kaito's face as he bent down to murmur something to the man. The one he had sacrificed his world for, and still failed to protect.

Which left Hoshino hovering anxiously in the office. Yagami waved him over, trying to find somewhere for him to sit. Putting more effort into it than truly necessary in an attempt to ignore the others.

"Please, do not worry," Hoshino gave a quirk of a smile and an adjustment of his bag. "I need to report back to Genda-sensei."

Sugiura rolled his eyes, painfully elbowing Yagami's thigh as he shifted, "text him; I'll just lie on you too. You're not nearly as boney as Yagami-san."

Hoshino's response was not verbal, though he did come over, picking up the pile of blankets. One was awkwardly draped over Higashi's back, and another over Kaito. Yagami took the one he was offered with his hands, whilst Sugiura pulled faces until it was draped over him. Duty done, Hoshino scrambled to tuck himself in the tiny space behind Sugiura, cocooning himself in his blanket and leaving the rest in a heap on Sugiura's face.

A quick "Hey!", some shifting about, and a number more elbowings for all parties later, the remaining blankets were scattered over the group instead of the floor.

Higashi had also stopped crying about whatever was distressing him (Yagami could think of a good number of things, though none the man would be willing to cry about in public), and was now watching everyone with a distant expression. His entire posture was more relaxed, head resting limply against Kaito's knees. Everything about his posture screamed exhaustion, as did the way Sugiura had stopped his constant fidgeting.

Even if they had been willing to break the new silence, Yagami was not sure they could have done. The Mole was caught, the danger was over, Okubo was on the path to freedom, Emi and Matsugane avenged... What was there left to unite them? To speak of or bring them together.

One by one they fell asleep, wrapped around and entangled with one another as though they were one being, leaving only Yagami awake. Even Hoshino, naive, nervous, brave Hoshino, Yagami's wandering mind was thankful the boy had managed to avoid injury in their collective escapades, though that in turn lead to him thinking on everyone else's... Blood and bruises and broken bones... Except... Except wrong, his mind extrapolated, tore apart, stitched back together, wrong wrong wrong-

Higashi, beaten black and blue, eyes gouged out and hidden behind his sunglasses, face-down in that same river. Hoshino shot in court, speaking in defence, blood staining the house of the law as their witness took vengeance for crimes revealed. Sugiura hanging from the ceiling, no longer struggling for air, breathing no more, seeing no more, teasing no more, just dangling and hanging hanging hanging. Kaito slipping all the way from the chair as Yagami and Hamura fought, the bullet in his stomach and blood soaking everything finally too much.

Without even really thinking, he reached out, finding each of them in turn. They were safe, he'd found them, they were alive.

Pulled them closer, held them tighter, tighter, safer...

Everyone was safe, see? Everyone was here. Everything was, once again, fine.

(Not everyone, not quite everyone, but enough. They had to be enough.)

The courtroom, Hoshino's triumphant smile at the case won and the day saved, Higashi's flippant comments as he looked at the corpse of their mark, Kaito's grin as he introduced his new 'friends' the police officers he just punched, Sugiura's concern for Yagami's injuries even having taken his own.

Five cups of whiskey-spiked hot chocolate, unfinished and discarded on the floor. Five men around a sofa, piled like a fallen jenga tower. Five members of a family, forged in blood and love and breathing still.

Everyone was indeed safe. It was indeed fine. Maybe, maybe, maybe-

Sugiura shifted, digging his knee into Yagami's injured ribs. He jolted more awake, hissing in pain as he tried not to disturb the others.

The fantasies of his mind were just those - fantasies.

Yagami shifted around to protect himself from the brat's flailing limbs, glanced once more around to check that everything was in order, and finally let himself fall asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Do I have a scene where Genda and Saori come in all worried because Hoshino never texted? Absolutely.
> 
> Do I also have a scene where Genda leaving wakes up Kaito and Higashi, and they have a brief sleepy chat? Well yeah.
> 
> And, do I have half written, significantly more angsty stuff with just Kaito and Higashi? Of course I do. 
> 
> Will any of this ever make it off my computer? ... Eeeeeh maybe? Depends.


End file.
